6 Reasons Why You Hit The Dreaded Weight Loss Plateau.

Losing weight is a battle: And like any good fight, you don’t always come out on top. At first, you were dominating, dropping weight every time you stepped on the scale. Then, the numbers began to slow, and now they’re completely stagnant.

You’ve hit the dreaded weight loss plateau.

It’s a bummer when your fat loss slows, but hitting a weight loss plateau is completely normal.

“The leaner you get, the harder it gets to lose those last few pounds,” says Tony Gentilcore, C.S.C.S., owner of CORE in Brookline, Massachusetts.

As you continue losing weight, your metabolism starts to slow down, so you either need to eat fewer calories or burn more calories to see continued weight loss. But still, your current weight doesn’t have to be your ending weight. You just need to start approaching your fat loss plan a bit differently if you want to see results. Here, six reasons you’ve stopped losing weight—and what you can do to get back on track.

Related: Weight Loss Plateau? Why It Is Not As Bad As You Think. 

WEIGHT LOSS PLATEAU CAUSE: YOU DON’T PORTION OUT YOUR FOOD

A lot of guys devalue the importance of portion sizes, says Gentilcore. You might think eyeballing the amount of food you eat isn’t doing much harm, but it can make a big difference when you’re trying to shed those last few pounds.

Say, if you add just a couple extra tablespoons of peanut butter to your daily smoothie, that’s around 120 extra calories, adding up to 840 extra calories a week.

“As you get a little bit closer to your target weight, you have to be a bit more meticulous,” says Gentilcore.

What To Do If You've Hit A Weight Loss Plateau.

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Related: Weight Loss Plateau? Why it Is Not As Bad As You Think

Related: Overcoming the Plateau! Tips to Break Through

Overcoming The Plateau! Tips To Break Through.

The decision to start losing weight isn’t always an easy one to make - but most of us find that, once we’ve made it, dropping those pounds is easy at first. Whether you’re counting calories, fitting in extra visits to the gym, or both, when you first start losing weight, it’s wonderful - the pounds slide off, the numbers on the scale rocket downwards, and the sense of achievement is fantastic. Yet the confounding fact is, the more weight you lose, the harder it becomes to lose more... and this can result in the dreaded fat loss plateau.

The fat loss plateau may seem confusing, but it’s simple, really. The larger you are, the more calories you need to maintain your weight, and as you lose fat, you need less and less calories to stay the same size. This is compounded by the fact that your body has a different opinion of your excess fat than you do - while you may see it as an unattractive embarrassment, your body sees it as an important natural resource... and the less you have of it, the more your body will work to cling to the fat you do have. This can result in your body going into ‘starvation mode’, and burning muscle, rather than fat, for energy, which is the complete opposite of what most of us are trying to achieve!

The fat loss plateau is common, and something almost all of us have to face when we’re trying to get back into shape. Fortunately, that means there’s a lot of tried and tested advice out there for kicking your metabolism back into action once it starts dragging its feet!

Overcoming the plateau through nutrition and exercise

When you reach a plateau, the first thing you should try is recalculating your calorie deficit, based on your current weight. Creating a calorie deficit simply means making sure you are burning more calories than you’re consuming, whether by restricting your calorie intake or by upping your exercise, and as you lose weight, you burn fewer calories. So you may actually need to make your calorie deficit smaller, to ensure you aren’t going into starvation mode, and hanging on to your fat.

Secondly, you may want to consider upping the amount of exercise you are doing, to see if you can reach those stubborn final pounds. But bear in mind that doing too much cardio places your body under stress, so it isn’t always the best option if you’re already doing the recommended maximum amount per week.

What to do when you’ve reached the right weight, but can’t shift stubborn fat

Plateaus are tough, but they can be worked through. Far worse, is when you’ve actually reached your target weight and level of fitness, but still don’t have the physique you desire. Areas such as the belly, thighs, hips, upper arms and bra area can hang on to stubborn fat cells, even when you’ve worked your very hardest. As we get older, our metabolism changes - fat levels increase in both genders, hormonal changes cause women to retain more weight around their hips and bellies, and lowered testosterone makes it harder for men to shift stubborn fat cells. Excess weight from childbirth, hormonal or health changes can all have the same effect.

The thought of this can be enough to make you give up, sit back and reach for the biscuits - but it absolutely shouldn’t! Exercising is vital for our health, and gets even more important as we get older, and there are other ways of shifting those stubborn extra pounds without going under the knife. CoolSculpting is a revolutionary new technique for fat loss - a celebrity favourite which was featured onscreen by Kim K in Keeping Up with the Kardashians, it involves the freezing of targeted areas of fat cells, causing them to break down and be processed and eliminated by the body, naturally and painlessly. Results can be seen as early as a month after treatment, but are generally visible from around 2-3 months and as long as you don’t gain excess weight again, the results will stay with you.

Fat freezing has become so popular that you can even buy kits which promise to allow you to perform it at home - but I cannot stress enough how utterly ill-advised this is. CoolSculpting is a registered trademarked treatment which is also FDA-approved, and benefits from the associated stringent safety standards - frostbite, skin damage, bruising, ulceration and scarring are all associated with improper imitations of the procedure, so don’t be fooled by copycats. The authentic cryolipolysis technology includes a patented ‘freeze detect’ safety feature which monitors the temperature variations in the skin to prevent damage.

Fat loss plateau is something most people have experienced at some point in their weight-loss cycle, but it can be managed through a combination of calorie deficit management, exercise and, for bothersome fat which cannot be shifted naturally, non-surgical aesthetic treatments. Don’t be disheartened when fat refuses to budge - losing weight is an amazing achievement, and once you’ve beaten the uphill battle of the bulge, the results will speak for themselves.

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Weight Loss Plateau? Why It Is Not As Bad As You Think.

What if I told you that the average American gains 1 pound every year? And that by not gaining a pound in the year, you’re actually doing well above average!

Most people lose a little bit of weight, hit a plateau, then immediately give up when things aren’t going as quickly as they were before. Most people gain that weight back and then some. This whole phenomenon of quitting when things are going more slowly is a bit like hitting traffic on your way home from work, and abandoning your car on the side of the road because you’re not driving as fast as you wanted. Or getting a flat tire and slashing the other three.

There’s a mantra in Zen: “the obstacles are the path.”

Plateaus happen. We know they’re going to happen. In fact, when we plateau, it means that we’ve made progress! It’s the perfect time to look back and see how far you’ve come because no human endeavor is linear. Learning a language, a musical instrument, how do date, or how to write well all takes time, with improvements coming in waves of easy progress, then stagnation, followed by bursts of more progress.

Diane Fu is a weight lifting coach in San Francisco who tells her athletes, “When you hit that first plateau and you’re not improving as fast as you were before, congratulations! You’re no longer a beginner!”

The same is true with fat loss. Weight loss can be fast in the beginning because the more weight you have to lose, the faster it comes off. The closer you get to your goal weight, the slower things get. So it’s not a sign you’re doing something wrong; it’s a sign you’ve done things right! It’s a sign that you’re completely normal and have hit a point that everyone hits on their weight-loss journey. A plateau is a mark on the road, letting you know you’re heading in the right direction, and that you’ve made a lot of progress.

So now it’s up to you. When most people hit a plateau, all they can think about is that things aren’t going as quickly as they were before, so they quit. The weight comes back on and they’re further away from their goal than they ever were. But plateaus are just part of the journey—a slight bend in the road that is still going to take you where you want to be. Do you turn around to go back? Or do you keep walking?

When you focus on the journey instead of the destination, the plateaus come and go. If you keep tracking, keep making little improvements to your diet, keep walking every day and getting some exercise, then the weeks when things aren’t going as quickly as you want them to will give way to the weeks when everything seems to fall into place.

And, before you know it, another year will go by. The average American gains 1 pound a year. The average dieter gains back more weight than he or she loses. So all it takes to be better than average is to keep moving forward.

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The Dreaded Weight Loss Plateau

You may hit a weight loss plateau when you have been on a reduced-calorie diet for a few weeks, and it may reoccur from time to time thereafter.

During such a plateau, weight reduction stops completely or slows down to almost nothing. If you are monitoring what you eat AND exercising regularly but still can't seem to lose any weight, you have most probably 'plateaued'. The most important thing to remember is that this is a completely normal experience for many dieters. The key to success is not allowing yourself to become discouraged! Take a long-term view. Giving up now means slipping back to where you started, which is such a shame given all the hard work you've done to get this far. There are solutions and steps you can take to kick start your weight loss again and ensure you reach your goal.

Why do I hit a plateau?

A plateau may occur because

• Your body simply wants a 'rest' to cope with your calorie-reduction


• Your calorie-intake equals your calorie expenditure - in other words you are not creating a sufficient calorie deficit to lose weight


• You have reduced your calorie-intake too low. If you are not eating enough calories, your body thinks there is a 'famine' and slows down your metabolism (how fast you burn calories) in order to conserve calories.

Most people lose weight quickly in the beginning of their diet, and then weight loss tends to stabilize at around 1 - 2 lbs per week. Unfortunately weight loss doesn't always follow a smooth downwards curve, but is rather a series of stops and starts. Expect this to be the case. The closer you get to your goal weight, the slower the weight tends to come off. This is partly due to the fact that your body has less fat to lose - it now has more lean tissue. Also, as you exercise more, you are increasing the proportion of muscle mass in your body, and muscle weighs more than fat. Then, there are weeks when you simply retain fluids and weigh a pound or two more than you did the week before.

• Avoid weighing yourself too frequently - once a week is enough. The timing of your 'weigh-in' is also important, as having gone without something to eat or drink for a few hours and having just spent a penny could make several pounds difference and give a low reading; whereas the opposite scenario could imply a higher than actual weight. In fact the difference between the two results could be as much as half a stone! So make sure you weigh yourself once a week, at the same time, after the same routine, and on the same scales. That way, your weight is more comparable to the previous week. Sometimes a better way to judge whether you are slimming down and changing body shape is just by monitoring how your clothes feel.
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• Ensure you have set a realistic goal weight for your body type and age. It may be helpful to consult with a nutritionist for advice. The most important thing is to reach a healthy weight - it is not about trying to get back to the size 8 body you had at 18, now you'1re 35 and have had 3 kids!
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• Go back to keeping your food diary religiously. By tracking what you eat, you may discover that you're actually consuming a good deal more calories than you'd imagined.


• Check serving sizes by weighing food. It is very easy for portions to start to creep up over time. Measuring and weighing food may seem tedious, but this is a common reason for weight loss slowing down or stopping. (And also have an honesty check with yourself that you haven't started picking at food which 'doesn't count' because you didn't eat the whole thing!)
  
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• Start exercising! To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume. Trying to lose weight by merely controlling your food intake is only one side of the coin. You must also increase your activity level to burn more calories, and this can also help to kick-start your metabolism. Start by just trying to walk more. Buy a pedometer and build up to the target of 10,000 steps per day.


• Step up your exercise level. If you are already exercising regularly, you may need to give your metabolism a little boost by increasing the amount or intensity of your workout. For example, if you exercise for 20 minutes each day, increase this to 25-30 minutes. If you are already exercising quite hard, try varying your workout routine. For example, if you do 20 minutes cardio and 30 minutes strength-training, switch them around. Add weight training to your workouts. Lifting weights helps build muscle mass, which, in turn, burns more calories. It is recommended that you should change your exercise programme every 6 weeks to stop your body becoming accustomed to the routine and it not having the same benefit it did initially.



• Drink plenty of water! Water helps speed up the metabolism.


• Don't starve yourself - this will have the opposite effect! If you eat too few calories, your body will try to protect itself by slowing down your metabolism and hanging onto its fat for survival. Also avoid going for too long without food as this can trigger the same effect. Ideally eat something such as a piece of fruit every 3 hours (women) or about every 5 hours (men). This reassures your body that food is plentiful and facilitates calorie burning.


• Be determined! Focus on your successes to date and remember the fact that weight loss is simply about creating an energy deficit - do this and you will lose weight. Stick with it and continue to exercise regularly and calorie count your diet. The last few pounds may be stubborn, but they WILL come off in the end!
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